A person or algorithm that compensates for lack of sophistication or
native stupidity by efficiently following some simple procedure shown to
have been effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this is not
necessarily pejorative; it recalls ‘Harvey Wallbanger’, the
winning robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the
cocktail). Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a
‘finger’ on one wall and running till it came out the other
end. This was inelegant, but it was mathematically guaranteed to work on
simply-connected mazes — and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more
sophisticated robots that tried to ‘learn’ each maze by
building an internal representation of it. Used of humans, the term
is pejorative and implies an uncreative, bureaucratic,
by-the-book mentality. See also code grinder;
compare droid.